Of patches and promises

Today Blizz announced the opening of the Patch 7.2 PTR. I am often very hard on this company, but I am giving them a lot of credit for hewing to their promise of chained patches and new content. I am someone who sets great store by keeping one’s word, and the quickest way to incur my wrath is to cavalierly make promises you have no intention of keeping. Even if I do not agree with the nature of the promises, keeping them is a virtue in my opinion.

So Blizz promised us a veritable freight train of continuous content in Legion, and thus far they are making good on that. For me, this is starting to restore some of the trust shattered in WoD. I am still a little leery, for trust once destroyed is difficult to repair, but so far anyway — at least on the “content” promise — things are looking up. (I will reserve judgement on promises to make hunters whole again…)

For a good summary of the little bit we know of 7.2 thus far, check out MMO-C. As to be expected, there is not a lot there yet, but a couple of things caught my attention.

Hunters, Death Knights, and Balance Druids have new spell animations. This is probably good, but fairly minor. I know hunter animations — especially when compared to, for example, the gorgeous Fire Mage animations — are clunky, clumsy and downright cringeworthy. And I do think we may be getting to the point (again) where visual clutter around the boss is becoming an issue. I don’t play a melee class so I can’t speak from experience, but I have heard a couple of our melee players mention it from time to time lately. Also, apparently there will be some changes to combat sounds, so maybe there is hope that my hunter will not make that noise that seems to indicate “I am having a very hard poop” every time I cast Bestial Wrath.

Reputation earned beyond Exalted will now contribute towards earning additional rewards from Broken Isles faction emissaries. This, of course, is an attempt to keep World Quests relevant, even when the rewards have pretty much become useless. It is a good idea in my opinion — I am getting to the point where I grind my teeth and mutter every time I complete a Kirin Tor emissary quest and basically throw away the rep token, since I cannot use it on my main and it is soulbound. I wonder if it would be smart now to just start keeping these in the bank, if we will be able to stockpile and use them later in 7.2.

(PvP) players who have received multiple pieces of unwanted gear (will be able to use the Obliterum forge) to exchange them for a piece of their choosing. OK, I am getting a little annoyed at this. First, PvP players whined and pouted because *GASP* they were going to have to suffer the indignity of RNG-determined gear! How terrible, how awful, how unfair!

So now Blizz is giving them a way to actually get the gear they want without having to repeat content hundreds of times in order to win the lottery. Come on, Blizz, remember? RNG is fun™, waaaaaay better than that icky old method of just picking out a piece of gear! Right? You have lectured us on that many, many times, so it must be true. So why exactly should PvE players have all the fun™, why shouldn’t PvP players share in it?

Pet spells can now be dragged onto the player action bar. Hallelujah! ‘Nuff said.

Class mounts. Yes! I am not usually very keen on collecting mounts, but I am excited about the hunter mount. Also, of course, about the implied flying ability (no mention of this so far in the patch notes, however.)

There were other, more major, announcements, but honestly it is too early to delve into them. There will be a lot of changes, adjustments, additions, deletions between now and the live patch. I encourage you all to dip a toe into the PTR if you have some time, and provide feedback in the PTR forums. It might be frustrating, but it can’t hurt to make the devs aware of your impressions, comments, and experiences.

5 Responses to Of patches and promises

I don’t agree with your comments about the PvP reward system getting favorable changes over the PvE system. Competitive PvP has the lowest player activity in its entire history…by a lot, and this is the result of gear being ridiculously hard to obtain. In it’s current format you need to be a 2.2k or higher ranked player to get any piece of gear similar to a Heroic raiding. Now considering most glads (people who play 7-10 hours per day) are only sitting at 2.4-2.5k rating you pretty much need to be in the top category of players to get gear you could get in Heroic Raiding….The time commitment to gear reward ratio for PvP is so unbalanced its ridiculous, and right now there is absolutely no motivation for the average or even above average PvP player to participate. On top of that even when you get a piece of gear (which typically most players only want for transmog unless your a 2.2k player), many times its a duplicate, which further adds to the frustration.

Lets be honest, I’ll shit a brick if the obliterum forge exchanges gear 1 piece for 1 piece, it will probably be many pieces for 1 piece…and honestly although this change is nice, its not nearly enough to keep interest in PvP. PvP doesn’t get anywhere near the attention PvE gets, so it irritates the shit out of me when PvE players get irritated at Blizzard for giving them something. If you need evidence look at the fact that PvP hasn’t been given a new arena or BG map since MoP. PvP is a cash cow for Blizzard, in terms of tournaments etc, and they don’t pay anywhere near the attention to it they should. If PvP dies, this game dies, and currently PvP is dying..and not slowly.

Yeah, good input. I freely admit I do not play PvP, so I am sure you are much more informed on the subject than I am. Still, my point was really about gross hypocrisy on Blizz’s part. Ion Hazzikostas has lectured us many times on how much better and more fun it is to get RNG gear than it is to “grind” for it with things like points or tokens or even achievement levels. And yet they have historically had the “grind for it” system for PvP players (what, they don’t want PvP players to have fun™?). Either RNG is the best way to go, or it is not, but to say it is best for one segment of the game and garbage for another is just insulting.

We can debate the relative merits of who this game is actually designed for until the cows come home, but the fact is that it is currently one unified game. Throwing PvP players a bone in the form of maybe some better shots at gear — at the expense of what is supposedly a core tenet of the current game design — does not fix any of the major shortfalls you identified. And it undercuts the tenuous trust Blizz is trying to build back up again, by saying that they are in fact lying to us about RNG being the best way to get gear, that it is actually just the lazy way to award it and if a certain segment of the player base really complains about it loudly enough then they have no problem abandoning the “principle”.

Sorry you had the shit irritated out of you by reading this, hope it was not too messy or embarrassing and that you had a change of trousers available …

Yea fair point about the RNG either being the best way to get gear for all or not. The PvP community has been extremely vocal about not wanting this since the implementation of Ashrann rewards at the beginning of WOD, Blizzard just refuses to listen. As you say, PvP has traditionally been a “grind system”, and basically the whole PvP community agrees that it was better that way.

I think Blizzard needs to abandon this RNG principle completely. The PvP community has been complaining about it since 2014, your right. The thing is now though that Blizzard has ignored their player base for so long that people are mass exiting the game, which is kind of forcing their hand to do something. I have witnessed this, most of my pvp partners, from both arenas and RBG’s, have all left the game…and these are long time players.

This game is meant for everyone, PvP and PvE oriented players, but regardless of our individual issues either side may take on the game the primary issue with the game is exactly what you mention in many of your post….that Blizzard does not listen to their player base.